The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1887-06-15
ABOUT DIRT ROADS.
The Evil and Remedy--The Economy of
iiaving Good Roads.
(From The Nation1

About this time of year Americans be
gin to give an amount of attention to
roads and road-malSing which is sadly
wanting during the rest of it. There is
probably no people in the world which
has made such progress in the arts of
civilized life generally that seems to care
SO little fol what good many social
philosophers put among the very fore
most of therl, the art of road-making
In fact, some philosophers have pro
nounced the history of roads the history
of civilization Nothing distinguishes a
civilized country from barbarous one
SO markedly as tho difference between
the means OF communication between
one locality and another. AS general
rule, one knows that people is rising
IN the scale by seeing its roads improve;
one knows that it is declining by seeing
It's roads so out of repair. Nothing
marked so wildly the great plunge into
barbarism which Europe took after the
tall OF the Roman empire as the disap-
poarancc OF tho superb lines of commu-
nicntion which led from the forum
straight as an arrow to every corner of
the Roman world Nothing, too, tells
the tnlo OF Chinese decadenco so dis
tinctly as the ruin which has ovcrtaken
the great roads and canals which at an
earlier period connected the capital with
the provil ces When an American goes
to Europe Tor the first time, nothing
scoms oddcr than the superiority OF the
European roads iii countries which can
make no pretCncc Of equalng the United
States in other marks of material
progress. We arc not a declining pco-
pie; on the contrary we arc the most
growing people in the world. We are
not among the poor nations OF the globe;
on the contrary We arc probably the
very richest. We arc not indifferent to
material improvement; on the contrary
the most frequent charge made against
us Is that we give too much attention to
1t, and yet we arc worse off, by fur, in
the matter o. roads than any other high
ly civilized community.
Tho original reason of the American
indifference about ROADS was probably
tho rapidity with which tho carly settlers
scattered themselves in small communi-
ties over wide areas, The fever people
there are to the square mile of inhabited
territory, OF course the cOstlicr roads be-
come; and when population is very much
dispersed, as in frontier settlements,
people cease to think of good roads as a
luxury within their reach, and devote
themselves simply to the task of keeping
them passablc. This tendency to neg
lect the art of road.making would prob
ably have disappeared early in this cen
tnry ii the railroads had not come in rs
the great lines of communication, thrown
the post roads and military roads out Of
to the condition Of crossroads or by-
" iHln ,,tlrNnI,,. Il IL =
but they dispersed the settlers over still
wider areas than ever, and thus made the
prospect OF running good highway
past every mans door seem hopeless.
The consequence has been that the early
colonial or frontier state of mind-in
which road was considered good
enough if it was simply practicable to
wheeled vehicles chat is, if there were
no holes or rocks in it sufficiently
formidable to upset carriage), and any
thing better than this an unattainable
luXury-has almost settled into national
tradition.
One has only to so few miles out of
in every direction being repaired in the
exact manner in which they were re.
paired by the struggling colonists be-
c"NNIi i'''N tll't L iUu--llltiI 10, IOIllllIS lS
attempted beyond filling mp the holes
with any material that is at hand, and
aifording facilities for the water to luu
of. The material that is at hand is, of
course, the mud of compost out of the
adjacent ditch. This is shovolled up
With the utmost gravity and deposited
all along tho centre, filling up the cavi-
ties and hiding from view the projecting
10 In, OF intu IN Xul,inl,
strong clay is obtained in this way, the
result is often satisfactory enough. But
as n general rule the contents of the
ditch are simply mud or docayod vcgct-
able matter, fit only for manure. Spread
over the road rs n plaster, it rapidly be-
comes dust and is swept away by the
wind, or else becomes mud and is washed
back again into the ditch, or down into
the hollows, in which in wet weather it
forms kind of quagmire, through
which horses toll wearily. The one adj
vance we have made in this curious
process over the early colonists is the
invention of the large iron scoop or
shovel, worked by oxen or horses, rs
substitute for the manual labor of the
olden days. a foreigner, seeing it at
work for the first time, is always disposed
w DcllcNo Illdl UIlc TOiltl ID DelllR prcDur-
ed for crop of some kind, and as
matter Of fact we have ourselves seen
many mile of country road in which,
after the spring repairs, potatoes or corn
would have grown very luxuriantly.
OF course there are signs Of progress
out of this primitive condition in the
more donsely settled districts on the
eastern coast and in the neighborhood
of the large cities. The Park roads,
with which people have been made ia
miliar during the past thirty years, have
shown those who have never been abroad
what good road is, and have thus
raised the standard of road making, as
the Vienna bakery raised the standard of
bread making all over the country after
the Philadelphia exposition in 1877. But
most rural districts suffer greatly from
not having a standard at all. Some of
those who tax themselves most freely
suffer most, because the plentiful supply
of money not only does not improve tho
roads, but breeds political ring, who
treat it as doodle" The reason they
suffer is that, as they have no standard
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